Internet Marketing Digital_marketing_for_dummies | Page 230

because it’s the same thing that every media property needs: great content from reliable
sources. A small, niche media player, however, doesn’t have access to teams of journalists
and content creators working around the clock to produce new content. It’s constantly
searching for more content to serve to its audience.
When you reach out to niche media properties, you have to speak their language and
address their pain points. Let them know that you are a reliable, authoritative resource who
can contribute great content to their audience — and all you need in return is a byline that
links to your website or landing page. Remember that great content educates, inspires, or
entertains an audience, and that is exactly what these niche media properties are searching
for.
Networking by topic
As you work to earn media mentions and build partnerships through social networking,
brainstorm satellite topics that relate to your company, and use those topics as a way to
network with others. Chances are, you’ll determine plenty of topics from your
brainstorming session that are outside your organization’s expertise. You can take the
opportunity to locate brands and individuals who are authorities in those topics and use
social networking strategies to form connections and partnerships with those people. Share
their content with your audience often, and tag authors or brands as you go. By doing so,
you associate and potentially partner with these brands and individuals as part of the
networking phase of your social media marketing mix.
For example, if the language learning software company Rosetta Stone wants to share
content about traveling to Spain on its Facebook page, it might share an article about that
topic from a reliable travel brand like Lonely Planet or TripAdvisor. By sharing content
about something that interests potential customers, Rosetta Stone would simultaneously be
networking with influential brands.
Creating a social media “short list”
Creating a “short list” of this nature involves a specific process that uses Twitter to
organize the people and brands you want to network with. If there is one thing that is more
valuable to media properties than new content sources, it’s gaining more exposure to the
content that they already have. This means that sharing your influencers’ content with your
audience on the social web is a surefire way to build goodwill and increase the likelihood
that the influencer will notice you and return the favor in kind. However, the firehose of
content on Twitter makes tracking down and organizing your influencers’ content
challenging. You need a way to easily identify and share their content. That’s where short
lists come into play.
Several tools are available to help you identify the key players in your industry, niche, and
other topics relevant to your audience. Paid tools like GroupHigh and Inkybee allow you
to track down influential bloggers, organized by topic. Free resources like Klout
( https://klout.com/home ) or Kred ( http://home.kred/ ) are social scoring platforms that